{"id":135,"date":"2001-12-05T02:02:00","date_gmt":"2001-12-05T07:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/2001\/12\/05\/\/"},"modified":"2005-10-23T19:08:21","modified_gmt":"2005-10-23T23:08:21","slug":"naked-chef-and-jesus-fangirls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/2001\/12\/05\/naked-chef-and-jesus-fangirls\/","title":{"rendered":"Naked Chef and Jesus Fangirls"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Not much has been going on, so I haven’t had much to write about. The evil product at work is almost done so I spent all of today updating documentation. Which was, at least, a nice change of pace. The grad school app isn’t due until 2\/15, though I still need to email my prof by the end of the week, ’cause I want to give him plenty of time to say yes or no to writing a recommendation.<\/p>\n

The laptop has been acting rather oddly the past couple of nights. The screen will start to waver and then it will go all white and I have to put the computer to sleep and wake it up before I can see anything again. I would be worried, except the laptop belongs to BestBuy and if it breaks they have to replace it and not us.<\/p>\n

So I’m watching the Naked Chef right now, and I’m thinking how cool it must be to live in a country where taking a train is actually a reasonable alternative to driving or flying. Outside of a small area of public transportation, that just doesn’t seem like it’s possible around here. Trains are so frigging slow and they cost more than a plane half the time. So what’s the point?<\/p>\n

One of my mailing lists is currently teetering on the edge of a potential volcano. Unlike most of my anime lists, which tend to attract, if not quite the sort of weirdly-mixed liberal that I am, at least people who are very open minded, this list has a current that runs more to the conservative. Lots of religious types. Not just religious, but evangelical, conservative Christian types. Normally the list has a very directed conversation geared to avoid the sorts of problems that clashes would cause, but we do occasionally veer off topic, and recently the subject has fallen upon libraries, children’s reading material, and Harry Potter.<\/p>\n

The thing that continues to strike me again and again about the people who don’t want their children to read Harry Potter is their absolute and firm believe that witches and witches are REAL. Harry isn’t a work of fantasy to them; it’s a textbook. It just boggles my mind. But even more than that, what they’re afraid of are ideas. One person said “I don’t want any ideas other than Christianity to come into our house, or they might be tempted away from it.” That’s just a staggering statement to me. First of all, if Christianity is so wonderful and fantastic and you’re so pleased to be saved and welcomed to Jesus or whatever, reading a fairy tale shouldn’t shake the very foundations of your faith. I can’t believe a parent would purposely force their child into ignorance because -they- are afraid of the rest of the world. Which leads to the second point, which is that saying something like that shows a pathetic amount of confidence in their child. There’s just a point where you have to trust that you’ve taught your child and let them make their own decisions. And the earlier you start letting them do that, the better. Too many people grow into adults without ever having to think about anything on their own, and by that point their brains have just atrophied. People are just a little too concerned with the susceptibility of children. I think you should protect your children from physical harm and emotional abuse and support them in what they want to do. But you shouldn’t try to hide them away from the world or lie to them about what it’s really like. They should have access to whatever information they’re ready to handle — and by ready to handle, I mean, if they ask, you should answer or be prepared to explain why not.<\/p>\n

When I was growing up, the largest restriction I ever felt from my parents was having to go to bed at 9pm until the 7th grade. Only once did we have an argument over a movie I wanted to go see (and, frankly, I think mom was just in a bad mood — come on. Little Shop of Horrors. I had SEEN THE PLAY on a school field trip. >_< ). My reading material was never ever censored. My television viewing was only restricted by the fact that we didn't have cable. I could come and go as I pleased and was generally allowed to borrow the car when I wanted after I got my license. I applied to 8 colleges without a heck of a lot of input with them, and then picked the one I liked best. I went to CCD until 8th grade, and even though I did get confirmed eventually (insanely hypocritical of me, considering how I feel about organized religion), I never felt pressured to display more religious devotion than I actually felt. I'm sure, by the standards of those excessively religious parents on the mailing list, that I'm a horrifying example of what such freedom can produce. So all I can do is vow to create more people like that when I get a chance. ^_^\n\n

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Not much has been going on, so I haven’t had much to write about. The evil product at work is almost done so I spent all of today updating documentation. Which was, at least, a nice change of pace. The grad school app isn’t due until 2\/15, though I still need to email my prof […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2,17,9,5,8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}